Just FYI, I've added the below to the gradientgoodness wiki page.

-Josh

bulia byak wrote:

On 1/11/07, J.B.C.Engelen@...1578... <J.B.C.Engelen@...1578...> wrote:

...

If you find yourself with some offtime, I'd like you to check out my work on the gradient tool for 0.46.

I've played with it some, not too much, but here are some observations:

• Node moving by arrow keys currently does not work

• Let's try to make less of GrDrag public. The

sp_gradient_context_delete_stops is especially intrusive. Can you try to move the core of that function into a GrDrag method and make only that method public? This would let us make a lot of other stuff in GrDrag private.

• The node deletion logic needs to be smarter. In particular:

1. when deleting an intermediate stop, do what you're doing now, no

need to change

2. when deleting an endstop and there's at least one intermediate

stop, shorten the gradient by making the closest intermediate stop the new endstop (you're doing it now but only for color/opacity; I think we should also change the position of the endstop by moving it to the position of the closest intermediate, in effect shortening the gradient line, so that the rest of the gradient does not change at all)

3. when deleting an endstop and there are no intermediate stops,

remove the gradient and paint the object with the color/opacity of the other stop, not with black as now.

On 1/26/07, momo <momo@...1386...> wrote:

Hello,

Are there plans to enhance node editing by having the possibility to select node handles and move them with arrow keys?

You cannot select a node handle and move it with arrows, but you can select the node itself and rotate/scale it with [] and <> keys, which amounts to the same thing: scaling a node moves its handles closer to/farther from the node and rotating it just rotates the handles.

So it's really easy in Inkscape to achieve the symmetry as in your screenshot. Just select one node and press [ several times, then select the other node and press ] the same number of times.

You can also use these keys with Alt which gives pixel-size adjustments, allowing very precise movement.

Finally, if you want to move only one of the two handles, use right/left Ctrl or Alt with the [] <> keys to move the right/left handle correspondingly. (Although I'm thinking about changing that, as using left/right modifier keys is not very convenient.)

Also, node handles should stick to guidelines (like nodes) to have at least some drawing precision.

They do snap to guides and grid if you enable "snap nodes to guides/grid" correspondingly in document prefs. They also snap to angle increments when mousedragged with Ctrl. There are lots of other keyboard shortcuts and modifiers too.

In short, there are lots of ways to control node/handle movement, with complete keyboard control. Just read http://inkscape.org/doc/keys.html thoroughly, it's all documented. If you still think something is missing, I'd like to hear your suggestions :)